lley flowed a large rapid stream, clear as crystal, and of a
beautiful beryl tint. The cultivation was scanty; and the potato fields,
utterly ruined by disease, tainted the air with sickening effluvia. The
occasional forests on the hill-sides were of fir and birch, while
poplar, ash, and linden grew in the valley. The only fruit-trees I saw
were some sour red cherries.

But in the splendour of the day, this unfriendly valley shone like a
dell of the Apennines. Not a cloud disturbed the serenity of the sky;
the brown grass and yellow moss on the mountains were painted with sunny
gold, and the gloss and sparkle of the foliage equalled that of the
Italian ilex and laurel. On the second stage a new and superb road
carried us through the rugged defile of Saltenaaset. This pass is
evidently the effect of some mighty avalanche thousands of ages ago. The
valley is blocked up by tremendous masses of rock, hurled one upon the
other in the wildest confusion, while the shattered peaks from which
they fell still tower far above. Threading this chaos in the shadow of
the rocks, we looked across the glen upon a braided chain of foam,
twisted together at the end into a long white cascade, which dropped
into the gulf below. In another place, a rainbow meteor suddenly flashed
across the face of a dark crag, betraying the dusty spray of a fall,
else invisible.

On the third stage the road, after mounting a difficult steep, descended
into the valley of Borgund, in which stands most probably the most
ancient church in Norway. It is a singular, fantastic structure,
bristling with spiky spires and covered with a scale armour of black
pitched shingles. It is certainly of no more recent date than the
twelfth century, and possibly of the close of the eleventh. The
architecture shows the Byzantine style in the rounded choir and the
arched galleries along the sides, the Gothic in the windows and pointed
gables, and the horned ornaments on the roof suggest the pagan temples
of the ante-Christian period. A more grotesque affair could hardly be
found in Christendom; it could only be matched among the monstrosities
of Chinese art. With the exception of the church of Hitterdal, in
Tellemark, a building of similar date, this is the best preserved of the
few antiquities of Norway. The entire absence of feudal castles is a
thing to be noticed. Serfdom never existed here, and one result of this
circumstance, perhaps, is the ease with which institutions of